“This is the Animal Vivisection Bureau,” said my guide. “It is not open to the public while demonstrations are being given. The Council does not permit the laity to acquire medical knowledge. We have several hundred dogs constantly kenneled beneath, in the sound-proof rooms; they are born there and, in general, die here.” “You use only dogs?” I asked. “At present, yes. Their trustfulness and docility make them the best subjects, for we are demonstrating to our classes the nature and symptoms of pain. Now here—” I followed him through another swing door into a similar room, but at least twice the size. “This is the Vivisection Bureau,” he continued, taking his stand beside a table of reddish marble mottled with blue veins, with a cup-like depression at the head. “The people call it, jocularly, of course, the Rest Cure Home. You can guess why. Criminals and other suitable subjects are never lacking for experimentation. Doctor Sanson is said to be making investigations which will prove of a revolutionary nature. Then, the supply of moron children appears to be inexhaustible. Again, of course, there is the annual Surgeons’ Day, when we round up the populace. The date being movable, the ignorant are kept in a state of wholesome apprehension. But let us follow that throng.” Through the glass of the swing door I perceived a large crowd pouring into another part of the building, following in the wake of an old man, perhaps eighty years of age, who was being conducted by two of the blue-coated guards. Behind him trailed a little rat-faced man in blue, who glanced furtively about him with a smile of bravado. We went with the mob into a third chamber. It was about the size of the second, and in the center was a large structure of steel, with a swing door. The brass rail which surrounded it kept back the spectators, who lined it, heaving and staring, and uttering loud exclamations of interest and delight. The room was filled with the nauseating stench of an anaesthetic. One of the guards raised a drop-bar in the rail, and the old man passed through and walked with firm steps toward the steel structure. His white beard drifted over his breast, his blue eyes were fixed hard, and he had the poise of complete resignation. At the door he turned and addressed the spectators. “It’s a bad world, and I am glad to go out of it,” he said. “I remember when the world was Christian. It was a better world then.” He passed through, and the anaesthetic fumes suddenly became intensified. I heard the creak as of a chair inside the structure, a sigh, and the soft dabbing of a wet sponge. That was all, and the mob, struck silent, began to shuffle, and then to murmur. I saw the rat-faced man slinking away.